If you happen to be one of the few people trying out the Windows XP Service Pack 3 beta, be advised: your clocks apparently won't update automatically Saturday night/early Sunday morning.

According to this Microsoft TechNet post, Microsoft decided to hold off on adding time-zone updates until about the time SP3 goes live, which will be in the first half of 2008, according to Microsoft.

"Thanks for the suggestion," wrote Shashank Bansal of Microsoft on the TechNet site. "Our current plan is not to integrate the time zone package with SP3, but instead release a new updated update to windows update. the new package would be installable on SP3."

All that basically means, apparently, is that when SP3 goes live, there will also be a new version of Windows Update released. That version was also scheduled to be updated shortly thereafter; if I read this correctly, that update will be replaced with a new package that will include the DST fix.

The problem apparently arose when a Montevidean user attempted to update its system with SP3, the noted that Montevideo Standard Time had disappeared from his system. Bansal then wrote back and informed the user that Microsoft will hold off on the time-change package until after SP3 goes live.

Just in case you think that this is a uniquely Montevidean problem, a user adds:

"I have the exact same issue, but I'm trying to run the new Google Outlook Calendar Sync and it give me the error saying "You seem to have outdated timezone information. Please Run Windows Update." So I went to install the time zone patch and it says that the files are incompatible with my version of Windows. The TZupdate didn't hel me. I'm really stuck. Any suggestions???"

...proving that Google, at least, is more on the ball than the SP3 update team is.